Semi-Official 6.x Suggestion Thread

[Vynadan]

When using the (relativly) new Production Overview I can see most major operations in a single empire through the four tabs, but I feel like it's still missing something:

Adding a fifth tab to display the task of shipyards themselves (adding slipways, etc) and not just the ships under construction would help a lot - Particularly in the early game years when building up shipyard capacity I find myself often looking through the industry tabs of all empires to see if any shipyards are idling because I missed their finishing message in the event log.

With 3+ factions it can still be a hassle to scroll through all their individual prod. overviews to check all their imminent events. The overview is still a grand feature, but sometimes I wish for a "ghost faction" (or possibly a function of the SM race?) that displays the imminent events of *all* factions at once to get all info in a single screen / on one look.

[sloanjh]

Another tilt at the size-1 missile windmill:  (detailed discussion in http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5525.msg61571.html#msg61571)

1)  Add a fixed-size "guidance package" requirement to all missiles of e.g. 0.5 MSP (missile size point).  This would give a size-2 missiles 3x the usable volume of a size-1 missile.  It doesn't have to be called a guidance package (the last time I proposed this I think the concern was that even a big computer is much smaller than a MSP), it just needs some technobabble to justify it being a significant fraction of an MSP.

2)  Fix the "why doesn't my armor tech affect my ability to armor missiles" problem as follows:  Missile armor is treated as ship armor, with a factor of 1/20 thrown in to account for the MSP/HS size ratio.  So 1 armor point (which can absorb 1 warhead strength point) on a ship is the equivalent of 20 MAP (missile armor points).  This means that a str-1 warhead can kill any missile with up to 20 MAP.  Beyond that, you could either treat the missile as having a single armor column to absorb hits or continue with the probabilistic kill formula (probably a lot less coding/book-keeping).  The reason for doing this is:

3)  Allow size-0 (or almost-size-0) warheads to kill missiles.  The easy way is to say that the missile itself does 0.05 strength points of "kinetic kill" damage.  This is enough to kill 1 MAP, with lower kill probabilities on armored missiles and no chance of scratching a ship.  And since we've got the guidance package mass, we don't run into the previous problem with micro-missile exploits - the minimum size of a missile is the guidance package size.  The reason this is needed is that the guidance package overhead will nerf size-1 AMM, so they need some other mass savings to make them effective.

[EDIT] 4)  Round warhead damage in increments of 0.05.  This would allow you to build an AMM with a str-0.15 warhead for dealing with incoming missiles with 3 MAP (note that I'm assuming the missile itself has 1 MAP, so a 3 MAP missile requires you to buy 2 MAP (0.1 HS) of armor. [/EDIT]

I think there's a lot of goodness here:  Fixing the missile armor problem by making missile armor and ship armor more closely related, fixing the issue that a str-1 warhead will be overkill for most unarmored missiles, pushing the balance towards beam PD for taking out big, heavily armored missiles, solving the AMM spam issue, ...

John

[Brian Neumann]

Another tilt at the size-1 missile windmill:  (detailed discussion in http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5525.msg61571.html#msg61571)

1)  Add a fixed-size "guidance package" requirement to all missiles of e.g. 0.5 MSP (missile size point).  This would give a size-2 missiles 3x the usable volume of a size-1 missile.  It doesn't have to be called a guidance package (the last time I proposed this I think the response was that even a big computer is much smaller than a MSP), it just needs some technobabble to justify it being a significant fraction of an MSP.

2)  Fix the "why doesn't my armor tech affect my ability to armor missiles" problem as follows:  Missile armor is treated as ship armor, with a factor of 1/20 thrown in to account for the MSP/HS size ratio.  So 1 armor point (which can absorb 1 warhead strength point) on a ship is the equivalent of 20 MAP (missile armor points).  This means that a str-1 warhead can kill any missile with up to 20 MAP.  Beyond that, you could either treat the missile as having a single armor column to absorb hits or continue with the probabilistic kill formula (probably a lot less coding/book-keeping).  The reason for doing this is:

3)  Allow size-0 (or almost-size-0) warheads to kill missiles.  The easy way is to say that the missile itself does 0.05 strength points of "kinetic kill" damage.  This is enough to kill 1 MAP, with lower kill probabilities on armored missiles and no chance of scratching a ship.  And since we've got the guidance package mass, we don't run into the previous problem with micro-missile exploits - the minimum size of a missile is the guidance package size.  The reason this is needed is that the guidance package overhead will nerf size-1 AMM, so they need some other mass savings to make them effective.

I think there's a lot of goodness here:  Fixing the missile armor problem by making missile armor and ship armor more closely related, fixing the issue that a str-1 warhead will be overkill for most unarmored missiles, pushing the balance towards beam PD for taking out big, heavily armored missiles, solving the AMM spam issue, ...

John

I like the entire package sugested here.

Brian

[alex_brunius]

I think it feels strange that civilian lines immediately start launching ships with ultra modern engine technology right after you researched a new level.

Fuel efficiency advances should be adapted quickly (since it affects their profitability), but in general I think the modern new engine types should be pretty widespread in your military before being passed down to civilian use. Right now it's quite the opposite due to the time it takes to research engine models, finding a slot to build them and call ships back for refits or retool shipyards for new constructions.

[ardem]

One thing I been waiting for a long time (besides my many posts on improvements to ground combat <grin>) is the ability to target components or have a weapons designed to temporary disable engines.

Things like the Ion Canon in star wars, which brings down the ships systems for a short period. Alternative would be to target engines only, the reason is to allow for more opportunity for boarding. Currently the system relies on two things luck to score engine damage and a fast enough ship to board without getting splattered. Plus your damaging the ship you want to board.

I understand it could be open to exploit so I feel the canon should be a short range weapon, like a Microwave weapon. the alternative would be to be able to target with lasers invidiual systems (AKA weapon systems, engines, sensors) The would give more weight to laser or close in weapons and open a vast array of new strategies. Even Laser fighter might be given a real role.

[alex_brunius]

the alternative would be to be able to target with lasers invidiual systems (AKA weapon systems, engines, sensors) The would give more weight to laser or close in weapons and open a vast array of new strategies. Even Laser fighter might be given a real role.

It would still require you to get very close. I can't imagine being able to specifically target subsystems unless the weapon already has well above 100% chance to hit the target.

A simple way to do it would be to just take hitchance -100% for the chance to hit subystems. 140% chance to hit = 40% chance to be guaranteed a hit on a specific subsystem.

Such a system could be included together with giving FCs above 100% base chance to hit at very close ranges.

Another related thing I wanted for a long time is making bigger targets easier to hit (instead of having speed being the only factor). My first Aurora experience I tried out Gauss fighters and was puzzled that they had almost no chance of hitting a 60000 ton stationary civilian ship from minimum range. Sure their guns are small and inaccurate but not being able to hit a target 200 times their size from point blank, that is getting silly!


I would also love to see more detailed info in the log, so why not make it expandable so that the info is there when you want it only??

+ X Hit target Y for 5 damage
++ Base Chance to hit 64%, final chance to hit 40%
+++ Chance to hit due to target speed 84% (*64% = 54%), ZZZZ km/s / AAAA km/s
+++ Chance to hit due to target size 60% (*54% = 32%), BBBB ton / CCCC ton
+++ Chance to hit due to crewrating 125% (*32% = 40%)  

[ardem]

I would be happy in regards to chance to hit needing to be over 100% it make sense.

In no way do I suggest bypassing armour or shield, what I am suggesting is that you still need to core armour, but the chance to hit the said for component is guaranteed if you gain a to hit in that area. I like your thoughts about it above.

I would be nice to knock out engines and board, especially for civilian style vessels, this adds another element to game play. I think boarding should be a increase in gameplay.

[Kirkegaard]

When using win 7 on a laptop with a screen resolution on 1366 x 768, even with the minimize height on, I often can't see the bottom line in most windows. Could you maybe add a scroll function?

[Charlie Beeler]

When using win 7 on a laptop with a screen resolution on 1366 x 768, even with the minimize height on, I often can't see the bottom line in most windows. Could you maybe add a scroll function?

A bit of searching would helped.  The minimum vertical resolusion is 800.  Various people have post several solutions to get around this issue in the FAQ above.  And scrolling can't be added unless Steve migrates the base code out of VB6, which won't happen anytime soon.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

You should be able to see p much everything with Reduced Height Windows on 1366x768.

You could try shifting the Start bar to the left or right side of the screen rather than the bottom.

[Kirkegaard]

Thank you for your replies. I will try to work around it.

[Nightstar]

Auto surveying of some sort. Say, clicking a button on the galactic map to mark a system for survey. Survey ships with no orders head for the nearest marked system.

[Icecoon]

If you captured a colony on the same planet as yours, it would be nice to have a button that could merge the two colonies on the same planet. It would be helpful for the multi-faction starts.

[Konisforce]

2 things, neither terribly vital:

1st is a 'rich-man's problem' regarding infrastructure.  Having had commercial freighters take privately produced infra to my colony, now that it's CC 0, I'd love to be able to 'donate' it back to private industry.  Meaning: I have a large pile of infrastructure that I have to either move myself or put out contracts for someone else to move.  I'd rather not do contracts, simply because then the private freighters will prioritize that over anything else, and I'd have to pay for it.  Would rather have it go back into the pool of private infrastructure (like from the Wealth tab) since I have effectively maxed out the current supply of infra for my extra-solar colonies.

2nd would be variable tractor beams (I know it was mentioned in the 5.2 thread, thought I'd throw it in here).  Either a basic difference in size (like with engineering sections or fuel storage) that have a ceiling on the size of ship they can pull, or else a tech-tree with a designable component with size, strength, (maybe fuel consumption), maybe even # individual beams to pull multiple smaller ships up to the max strength.  Not really a suggestion to fix a problem, but mainly because I want to go nuts on the module ship design concept.  Fighters pulling drop tanks, PD modules, that sort of thing.  Though I'm sure the programming could get pretty hairy trying to do that.

[Havear]

Here's an idea I'm passing along that I rather like: Add custom "weights" for colonies, and just give the current location of the ship a bonus weight. If left at the default values they behave as they do now (population based iirc), but there's also a box to add a custom modifier amount that'll tweak its priority up or down. It could be useful, for example, to direct all shipping off the well-traveled routes to pick up equipment near the interstellar boundary. You could even add a multiplier to shipping cost based on the custom priority mod to simulate shipping route subsidization.

EDIT: I should mention that the above is for civilian shipping lines, so you can prioritize which worlds are being traded at.

Also, two other ideas:
- I know this has been mentioned before, but I'd *really* like a commercial hangar. Likely larger than a military hangar and unable to reload weapons.
- Maybe some sort of really, really pathetic civilian weapon system as commercial? Like, say, a minimum tech gauss cannon? It just strikes me as odd that no commercial ships can be armed in any way, shape or form. Or, just had a thought: Beam weapons more than, say, four tech levels behind par are commercial, signifying enough development time that they're solid, reliable units and old enough they're not considered a threat to the military.